i thought about coming back to comment on this, but i don't think i will get across the exact feeling i want you to know i am feeling right now, having finished this and if this fic has taught me anything, it's all about getting the timing right and i don't think you deserve something diluted so please bear with me and how this might not be the most well-thought out of comments.
there isn't a single moment of this that i didn't think was breathtaking and perfect and all your hours spent editing were worth it and possibly more because i don't know how you capture things, thoughts emotions feelings all of it, so well. i love the little pieces of what you know, what you have lived and know about come across in your fic, it's always something i have appreciated immensely because it makes the work that much truer, something i can see and imagine and feel churning in my gut. i've always loved tone in writing, i think it does so much for any piece of writing and helps the reader to feel the emotion an author wants to get across far more than anything else, and the way this is almost consistently painful, like the pain yixing feels, the constant tug and pull of his ex, the way you used the dreams to show the conflict, the growth of yixing and how his ex is almost leading him toward jongin, that he needs to hurry up and realise he likes him, because even jongin can't wait forever. i just -- you make my heart feel like it's being wrung and that is just no fair, tbh.
you have this way of pulling in all these aspects of canon that we know and giving them more meaning and helping the reader feel like they know everyone even more than they might, like it's so comfortable to read your fic because you always nail characterization and you are so consistent. the yixing i read in favors the bold is a yixing i can see here, more subdued, more grown up but the way jongin pulls him out, the way he still makes kris' life miserable and is still bros with luhan and just loves his friends (omg my jongdae feelings ;~~~;) just makes me feel like crying. which, btw, i did. i cried so much around the bit where yixing finally tells jongin about his ex and the photograph and this bit:
“It is a choice,” Yixing says. “Because love is selfish, anyway. And I really… I really wanted her to be selfish.” It’s a raw, unpolished thought. Like undeveloped film still in the can, waiting to be exposed, hung up to dry. Yixing’s not quite sure, sometimes, how prints will turn out. “I wanted her to demand everything from me.”
but especially the last line, is my absolute favourite part of the whole fic. that is such a relatable feeling, and something i've felt before. it's something that resonates so strongly with me and god, today has been so much crying but god i didn't know what to do, i was just stuck in that scene and read it like three times because i couldn't move past it, couldn't swallow around the lump in my throat because, because i knew you'd bring the words back, you are so good at that afterall. i knew and when yixing does go back for jongin, refuses to take that goodbye as just that, i cried then too ahaha;;; i've always loved that about your writing, the way you repeat certain phrases and bring them back and they feel like a punch to the gut because they feel so powerful when repeated back, the memory of the earlier scene still lingering in the back of your mind and it's like being doubled over.
no subject
there isn't a single moment of this that i didn't think was breathtaking and perfect and all your hours spent editing were worth it and possibly more because i don't know how you capture things, thoughts emotions feelings all of it, so well. i love the little pieces of what you know, what you have lived and know about come across in your fic, it's always something i have appreciated immensely because it makes the work that much truer, something i can see and imagine and feel churning in my gut. i've always loved tone in writing, i think it does so much for any piece of writing and helps the reader to feel the emotion an author wants to get across far more than anything else, and the way this is almost consistently painful, like the pain yixing feels, the constant tug and pull of his ex, the way you used the dreams to show the conflict, the growth of yixing and how his ex is almost leading him toward jongin, that he needs to hurry up and realise he likes him, because even jongin can't wait forever. i just -- you make my heart feel like it's being wrung and that is just no fair, tbh.
you have this way of pulling in all these aspects of canon that we know and giving them more meaning and helping the reader feel like they know everyone even more than they might, like it's so comfortable to read your fic because you always nail characterization and you are so consistent. the yixing i read in favors the bold is a yixing i can see here, more subdued, more grown up but the way jongin pulls him out, the way he still makes kris' life miserable and is still bros with luhan and just loves his friends (omg my jongdae feelings ;~~~;) just makes me feel like crying. which, btw, i did. i cried so much around the bit where yixing finally tells jongin about his ex and the photograph and this bit:
“It is a choice,” Yixing says. “Because love is selfish, anyway. And I really… I really wanted her to be selfish.” It’s a raw, unpolished thought. Like undeveloped film still in the can, waiting to be exposed, hung up to dry. Yixing’s not quite sure, sometimes, how prints will turn out. “I wanted her to demand everything from me.”
but especially the last line, is my absolute favourite part of the whole fic. that is such a relatable feeling, and something i've felt before. it's something that resonates so strongly with me and god, today has been so much crying but god i didn't know what to do, i was just stuck in that scene and read it like three times because i couldn't move past it, couldn't swallow around the lump in my throat because, because i knew you'd bring the words back, you are so good at that afterall. i knew and when yixing does go back for jongin, refuses to take that goodbye as just that, i cried then too ahaha;;; i've always loved that about your writing, the way you repeat certain phrases and bring them back and they feel like a punch to the gut because they feel so powerful when repeated back, the memory of the earlier scene still lingering in the back of your mind and it's like being doubled over.